


Fait Accompli

by TwinKats



Series: Free Fall [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Heavily Implied Child Abuse, a ton of hurt and a ton of angst, abstergo eugenics program, heavily implied emotional manipulation, heavily implied mental manipulation, literally the whole thing, no one is mentally ok, not a happy fic, petunia is not a nice woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-08-27 13:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16703332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinKats/pseuds/TwinKats
Summary: Petunia Dursley neé Evans had a lot of regrets in her life. Her sister, their estrangement, her marriage. This, she determined, would not be one of them.





	1. Chapter 1

The door to the house stood in front of her like a threat. Petunia clutched at her small bag with tight fingers and tried to build up the courage to knock. She could hear inside the sounds of children and felt tears sting at the edge of her eyes.

Petunia Dursley neé Evans had a lot of regrets in her life. Her sister, their estrangement, her marriage. This, she determined, would not be one of them. With a deep breath Petunia took a step forward, and knocked.

* * *

 

When Lily entered into her small family all Petunia knew was love. She loved her little sister with bright green eyes and red-as-blood hair. She loved her mother for whom she took most after—blond, wisp-thin, with sea-glass for eyes and tall enough to drive most men mad. She loved her father that little pretty Lily took after the most. She loved her Uncles that came to visit and check upon their family, and she loved their ever so perfect life.

Petunia was _full_ of love, and she excited in it. What more could a family as theirs do anything but love?

* * *

 

Lily was five when the family moved to Cokeworth. It started when Lily began to display the _gifts_. Petunia had only just been introduced to their Uncle in a far more formal matter and explained how important these gifts—hers, and especially Lily’s—were. The family was a small section of a larger group that focused exclusively on pairing off children to bring out traits. Traits like Petunia’s, or like Lily’s. After years and years of genetic research it all seemed to culminate into one major success—Lily.

“You have to keep her safe, Petunia,” her Uncle said softly. “They will try to turn her mind. Keep her focused on the path ahead. Let the Father of Understanding guide you, in this, as the Father of Understanding has guided your parents.”

Petunia took to her job seriously. She dogged Lily’s steps, kept a watchful eye on her sister, and while she faced homeschooling so that she could understand how to use her own gifts and just what the Project their family had been a part of this whole time _meant_ , none of Petunia’s love abated. In secret she whispered truths to Lily about the world.

 _We are not the first to walk here,_ Petunia told her. _But we are special, Lily-flower._ She spoke to Lily about the things their parents taught her—how their family had been born out of a necessity. Long ago, they said, there was a power in this world like none other. Humanity hated this power, hated the things it can do, and fought back. What was once peace became chaos, where there was order now disarray took its place. Violence and bloodshed became humanities tools of the trade. In silence the powers shifted, and then fled, and then vanished altogether to be lost to time.

Lily liked the stories Petunia would tell her, and she kept them secret. Petunia spoke of their Uncle and their job as sisters—Petunia to keep Lily safe, to keep her protected from those who would use her to incite chaos and disorder—and Lily’s to find out what had been stolen from them. They were special, mum and dad said. They were brilliant, bright children with the right gifts born at the right time.

 _The world is going to end if we don’t do something about it,_ Petunia whispered. _Will you help me?_

_Yes, Tuney. Always._

* * *

 

Lily was eleven when the letter came, as they expected. Cokeworth had a family that they’d kept a close eye on, one that had been picked for Lily to get close to and she’d succeeded. Petunia disliked the Severus boy. Something about him always rubbed her wrong, but she let the family ruling stand firm because without Severus then the chances that Lily would have gotten her letter—they could never be certain of it. They needed Severus to see her gifts, maybe go running to his mum, and that would put into motion the fact that Lily existed.

Lily wasn’t born the same way others were, after all, and Petunia knew that just as Lily did. Just as Petunia hadn’t been born the same way, or their mum, or their dad. They were the pride and joy of their Uncles, proof concept of the work they tried to replicate. Through them hopefully they could find a means to push peace and order—and stop the death of the world that threatened to come.

Lily though, Lily worried, and so did Petunia. The plans they’d laid came to fruition and soon Lily would be off to school, off to learn fantastical new ways to control her abilities—ways that were old as much as they were new, because they’d been around since before the First or so their Uncles theorized. Lily worried what this could mean. Soon she’d step into a society so far removed from their own. Could they really turn her mind?

_What if they lead me astray?_

_I won’t let them, flower. I promise._

_But what if?_

_Then I’ll turn you back._

Their Uncles were proud of them, their parents were proud of them, and with the letter discussion turned toward the next steps in the plan. Lily would infiltrate the society, take the knowledge, _learn_ enough that they could use what they have left over. How much had changed since the First? Were they even the same? No one had a chance to learn, this ‘wizarding world’ was so far tight lipped that even the few spies they’d been able to get close were still rebuffed. They had a plan though, a plan that hinged entirely on Petunia and Lily and their sister act.

“You need to sell it,” their Uncle said softly. “Sell that Lily is one of them. That you are not.”

 _I am though,_ Petunia wanted to say. She had the gifts too! They were different, she wasn’t as true as Lily was, but that didn’t make her any less than Lily.

“You are perfect, Petunia. They don’t need to know that.”

So they worked together, made this act where Lily spoke as if Petunia began to resent her, hate her, and Petunia played it up. During the summer hols when Lily came home if that blasted Severus boy were around Petunia played jealous and bitter.

Until everything went wrong.

* * *

 

Petunia was in her late teens to early twenties and she’d been sent to work at Grunnings as a secretary. They wanted her to pick a potential husband from a group of people with the right genetic line to create more children like Lily. Petunia was _close_ to perfection, and in some respects was perfection, but Lily wasn’t enough and their Uncles wanted _more_. Lily—sweet Lily was just a teen, alone in a world that made no sense while it made too much sense all at once.

_It is fascinating, Tuney, the things they do!_

_But…wizards? Really?_

_Well…it **has** been so long, hasn’t it? Maybe they’ve just forgotten?_

_That’s not possible. They have to be lying._

Then one day Lily came home for the summer hols and Petunia came to visit and found her little sister in complete shambles. They worked hard to build Severus up to her potential husband and he’d done the unforgiveable—thrown it _away_ , in her face, and treated her as worth less than dirt. Petunia tried to rebuild Lily’s shattered sense of self, but nothing worked. Their Uncles wanted her in London, wanted her to continue the family line. Lily had things well in hand.

_I’ve got this, Tuney. I…I have this._

_Are you sure?_

_Yes. Yes, I’m sure._

Petunia worried, because Lily began to speak to her less and less. Before she’d talk fascinating things about this ‘wizard world’ and the innovations they created, and yet disparage against them because supposedly they thought of humans so far _behind_ that it was laughable. Humans learned and adapted—they weren’t _animals_ , and sure they needed guiding but this? This was foolish. Of course there’d also been whispers, something of a ‘dark lord’ that wanted to wipe out humanity or enslave it.

_Isn’t that what we are doing, kind of? Enslaving people?_

_No. No we are making **peace** Lily. Everyone has their own minds, still, just…no more violence. Or war. And in peace we can stop the Fall from happening again! Don’t you want that?_

_…I hate war, Tuney._

_So do I._

Before Petunia knew it her little sister was close to graduating and speaking of things that made no sense. She came home and introduced her new boyfriend—not Severus, but some strange bloke called James—and Petunia felt as if her world began to shatter. She hated her life as it was. There was so little Lily and instead this new and _large_ man, Vernon, that wasn’t quite what she wanted. He made her feel small and Petunia _hated_ it, but her Uncles felt as if he had the right mix for their work. They needed her to draw him to their way of thinking.

It was the only time in Petunia’s life that she considered her Uncles to be flawed. Still, at least James seemed to be good looking although the way his eyes looked in certain light— _amber_ , like a cats or a bird of prey almost—left Petunia shivering. It made her feel as if she weren’t the beauty of her childhood, and while she knew that to most her long-limbed form was unappealing, she also knew she was a radiant creature when she put her mind to it.

A year later and Petunia got married to Vernon. She invited her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, and that was the end of the line. James was a cruel and capricious man that ruined her wedding and Petunia—Petunia had _enough_.

* * *

 

The last time Petunia saw Lily was just after Lily’s son came into the world. Petunia took her Dudley, a round creature that resembled his father and held none of the _gifts_ that she or Lily had, and went to a local café. Lily met her there, alone, with her little Harry. They were two sisters with their sons meeting for a simple lunch, except in their family nothing was ever so simple.

Petunia sipped on tea. Lily had some sweet sort of scone that she nibbled on.

“Does your husband know?” Petunia asked and set her cup down.

“No,” Lily said softly. “He thinks I’m researching for our son’s safety.”

Petunia didn’t believe her. Once they would’ve whispered secrets back and forth to one another, given each other smiles, and Petunia would’ve felt that little bud of warmth in her chest. Now she felt coldness, distance, and a frigidity that Lily never once before gave her. They went back to tea and scones and kept the conversation to light topics for a while longer. Petunia left; she didn’t have much time available. Vernon would expect her home.

“May the Father of Understanding guide you,” Petunia murmured.

“…yes,” Lily replied, distracted, focused on her son, and the gap between them widened further.

* * *

 

On November 1st, 1980 Petunia Dursley neé Evans stepped out to get the morning milk. There on her doorstep she found a small babe bundled up tightly, with a letter, forgotten on her front porch. The thing was asleep, thank heavens, as Petunia picked the child up. She left the milk for the moment and catered to the child. Who would be so foolish to leave something precious on the front stoop, as if a child weren’t a precious sight to behold.

Petunia rocked the babe gently as she moved into the sitting room and picked the letter up and out. The handwriting looked familiar, and Petunia felt a sinking feeling deep within her gut. Cautiously she peeled back the blanket so that she could see more of the child and her hand shook. She recognized the dark skin, and while the scar above the brow was new, she knew this babe.

Lily’s babe.

Petunia stared at the boy and all she felt was _empty_.


	2. Chapter 2

“Thank you for not slamming the door in my face,” Petunia said softly. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable, and from what she could see the girl in front of her tried rather hard to be accommodating despite the utter distaste. Petunia scrutinized her as subtly as she dared—she didn’t know what this child could do, not like she knew her nephew. The red hair was garish, didn’t fit her face at all, and the brow eyes reminded her far too much of the amber color from years Petunia wanted to forget.

“For whatever reason Harry loves you,” Ginny said as she set two cups of tea down on the table.

“And you love him,” Petunia took her cup and sipped the tea. Excellently made, she noted.

“I do,” Ginny agreed. She held on to her own cup tightly, knuckles white from the grip. Petunia set the china down and breathed out heavily.

“How far along are you, dear?” Petunia asked instead. “Your third, right?” She watched how Ginny’s face lit up with a smile, a little splotchy with the freckles that didn’t quite do her any favors—or at least, Petunia didn’t think so. She was so plain, but perhaps that was what Harry liked. Petunia wouldn’t know.

“Yes,” Ginny said, and her voice was bright and cheerful at the thought of the child. “A daughter.”

“A daughter?” Petunia let a smile cross her face. “Harry would love that.”

“He does,” Ginny agreed, voice soft.

A daughter. Petunia glanced to the swell of Ginny’s belly and felt—empty.

* * *

 

Lily named the boy Harry James Potter. Petunia didn’t know how she felt, to know the child bore that name, but she pushed on. Raising her nephew was no easy task and it wasn’t because Vernon hated the boy, although Vernon did make the task far harder than Petunia would’ve liked. No, little Harry was a silent tyke and struggled with his words. He made it apparent that there was something wholly _Other_ about him in the way that Lily nor Petunia were as children. Petunia glowed, and Lily had always been ethereal in likeness, but Harry took it to other places.

Vernon hated anything different, foreign or otherwise. James Potter made the man infuriated, and it wasn’t a surprise to Petunia that he hated the man’s son just as much. Harry looked nothing like the family except that she had Lily, and by that notion Petunia and Lily’s father’s, bright green eyes. The almond shape wasn’t even quite like Lily’s—it held more of that Potter in it than anything. He lacked the red-as-blood hair, or the pale spun locks of Petunia’s and took far more after his own father.

Dark skin, _foreign_ , with bright eyes and unmanageable hair. Petunia knew all about unmanageable hair—Lily’s hair had been a _nightmare_ to take care of, far too curly and wild shaped to be tamed, but they did tame it. Harry had the thick nest of dark locks that didn’t work the way Lily or Petunia’s own hair did. It went everywhere, refused to come right, and drove her batty. She tried to shave it down short and for a time as an infant it worked, but the older Harry grew the less he allowed his hair to be short.

There were other discrepancies of course not associated with his gift. He watched the birds with uncanny and sharp eyes, almost inhuman, and when he did speak—well, the boy couldn’t make up his mind what language he was supposed to talk in. Some days he spoke proper English and others he spoke Arabic, a language Petunia only knew because of her Uncles. Petunia never displayed this, never spoke the language at home or around her own child, and reprimanded the boy when he did so without prompting.

For the longest time when Harry finally started school the teachers were concerned that he had some strange sort of disability. Petunia worked to disabuse them of the notions, to get the boy to speak English as much as possible, and to remind him precisely that his Uncle would hate to hear of how _freakish_ he happened to act. The way the small child would stare at him, with wide eyes that made her think of Lily had Petunia’s heart clenched.

At the age of eight Harry needed glasses, so Petunia took him and got him a pair and that was when she decided to contact her Uncles and let them know about the boy. She had eight years of observed interactions, and they rarely talked to her these days as their focus was on far more fruitful endeavors. Especially since Dudley showed no real signs of any sort of inheritance of the likes of Lily or herself. Petunia resented them, a little, in how they cut her out and deemed her child a failure.

* * *

 

“How much does he know?”

Petunia looked to Harry who stared up at the doctor that drew a bit of the boy’s blood and pursed her lips.

“Nothing,” Petunia said eventually. “Severus was never recruited.”

Her Uncle hummed and murmured a faint, “A pity. The boy had potential. His father?”

“James Potter.”

They had no records on Potter, no knowledge of the lineage, but at least now they might have a chance, Petunia noted, with how much they drew and the varied sets of samples.

“Keep him ignorant,” her Uncle said. “We might have a use for the boy.”

Petunia nodded her head and collected Harry who stared at her Uncle, and at the doctors with eyes far too old for his face.

* * *

 

At ten Harry came up to her dressed in Dudley’s rags. He looked at her with those too old eyes and carefully fished out a necklace with a cross and set it on the counter. Petunia looked down at the boy and refused to look at the cross he handed her.

“They can’t be trusted,” Harry said in clear spoken English with a whisper of a voice.

“No,” Petunia agreed. “They cannot.”

Two months later Harry turned eleven and the letters started to arrive. Petunia watched events unfold as Vernon grew more and more enraged with the idea of her nephew to enter that world. Petunia let him, didn’t counter any arguments he made because Petunia could admit she _hated_ them. She hated how they turned Lily from her, and that no matter what she tried she couldn’t get her little sister back. She hated that they made her into a liar with a broken promise.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was at least a somewhat decent _whatever it was he was_. He kept Petunia up to date over the years about the messes her nephew got up and into. Without his comments Petunia would never have gotten Harry into the lessons that would lead toward his survival. She didn’t like the man. He made her chest feel as if it were full of cold fire and fury. Whatever Albus Dumbledore was Petunia knew he couldn’t be trusted with her nephew’s welfare, just as he couldn’t ever be trusted with Lily’s.

Just as their Uncles couldn’t be trusted, either, but Petunia kept those misforgiving’s to herself.

That first year when Harry came home Petunia talked with him about death, and about his responsibility toward the death of his teacher. They talked in the dead of night, with whispers through the door to the boys room about what he’d seen and felt.

_I didn’t like it._

_You shouldn’t like it, boy._

_I don’t want to kill anyone, Aunt Petunia._

Petunia explained that sometimes others didn’t care about the wants and needs of the people around him. They talked for hours, and then the twins showed up and stole the boy away. The coldness in Petunia’s heart reminded her of lies. The boy had spoken about how he never wanted to return to a world that would do what his professor had done, and then the boy was gone.

Good riddance.

* * *

 

Harry was near thirteen when Petunia signed him up for lessons with an old blade master that she happened to learn of from one of the neighborhood get togethers of the various wives. She hated the idea that the boy would learn to fight with a blade, but she knew a lost cause when she heard one. Harry came home that year with tales of a giant snake, of an item that possessed a girl, and of a sword that he’d barely had been capable of using to defend himself with.

_It…felt natural._

_To kill?_

_To hold a sword. Not to kill. Killing…killing isn’t natural, Aunt Petunia._

_Good. Never let killing be natural, boy._

The sword lessons kept the boy out of the house while Vernon’s sister visited and kept the friction between them to a minimum. Not for the first time Petunia debated a divorce from her husband, debated to just take her son and her nephew and leave in the dead of the night. A small part of her though felt as if the choice of husband made for her _couldn’t_ have been wrong. Her Uncles never led her astray as a girl, why would they as a woman?

Petunia _hated_ Marge more than she hated anything, so when the boy lost control over his gift and forced the foul woman to blow up like a balloon, Petunia hid a smile in her wine glass. He left that same day, and Petunia cancelled his blade lessons with a smile still hidden on her face.

* * *

 

At fourteen the boy had grown to be lanky. He wasn’t tall. Vernon refused to give the boy food enough that Petunia doubted he’d ever be tall like her, but he was thin as a wisp and that was a true Evans trait. These nights Harry joined her in the living room while Vernon snored and Dudley slept. He looked haunted and confused during their whispered talks. His too old eyes looked age appropriate this summer and that felt _wrong_ to Petunia.

_Are they human?_

The question haunted her, a little, Petunia knew. She wondered if what she’d been told was true. Were these ‘wizards’ and ‘witches’ the last descendants of the Precursors, or were they merely the next evolution of humanity? Petunia didn’t know science, didn’t know genetics. She followed orders like a good girl, married who she’d been told, practiced her gifts as commanded, and recited the rules as needed. She was a good puppet.

_I don’t know._

_I don’t think they are._

Harry spoke about how some of them could change their shape, become an animal, and how that felt unnatural and as natural as breathing to him in both ways. They talked about things, senses, that the boy had that he didn’t understand. He brought up the strange disconnect between his own memories, the fantastical tales of time travel. Petunia didn’t doubt the time travel.

 _There is an artifact,_ Petunia whispered as the boy curled into her lap in the dead of night, _that can turn back time. Or at least we think it can. Ancient…powerful tools._

When Petunia looked into the boy’s eyes she knew—he understood precisely what she spoke of.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Petunia will set things right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the story tags for this chapter especially.

“Let me help you with that,” Petunia reached out and carefully pulled the cups out of Ginny’s hands. At first Ginny tried to talk her out of it, but Petunia turned on a charm she hadn’t used in decades. Ginny let her bustle the cups into the kitchen and showed her where to place them. The girl had been awfully polite about Petunia’s perceived notions about her abilities, even.

Ginny made Harry a good wife, left him happy and content to let things lay. Petunia didn’t doubt that her nephew could have a good life here, a happy one, filled with the laughter and smiles of his children. Yet Petunia had told herself, when she stood in front of that door, that she would not fail in this. Not like she had with Lily, or with her marriage. She would not fail.

The knife felt firm in her grasp from where she grabbed it, and the girl had barely a chance to respond. Petunia looked into her eyes and felt no remorse.

“It is for the best,” Petunia said as she pulled the knife back and Ginny crumbled to the ground. Her hair spilled around her like blood, except too orange and bright and Petunia couldn’t help but wonder if this was how Lily looked when she died. Pale, with red-as-blood hair haloed around her in front of a crib and infant son.

Petunia crouched next to Ginny whose eyes dulled with death and asked with the tone of someone who merely wanted to know the weather, “The boys are upstairs, right?” She didn’t get a response. She didn’t expect one. “Right. I’ll let the others know.”

Petunia stood up, turned, and set the knife down on the table before she moved out of the kitchen. The acquisitions team waited for her outside, and she let them in with a bland smile and pointed them up the stairs.

“Be quiet,” she told them. “The boys are sleeping.”

* * *

 

The boy came home fifteen and changed. He never did tell Petunia what happened but she could read it in the way he didn’t talk, like how she knew something happened the year before. Harry had nightmares that were something fierce when he was fourteen, turned fifteen, and the mess that followed after still left Petunia with a bitterly cold feeling deep in her chest. The fact that the boy came home now fifteen and silent, well, Petunia knew something changed.

The distance only grew from there.

He’d always reminded her of her precious Lily, and the mirror image that struck her now made her feel just a little shy of nauseous. Lily had been fifteen when she changed, too, or at least when it started. Fifteen was when her mind began to turn and she began to find fault in the path and plan lain out for them. Could Harry be any more Lily’s son then, and turn from Petunia at that very same age? She wished it weren’t true, but she could taste it in the same way she could see the coldness in his eyes.

Petunia pressed her lips together and ran the rag over the cups in the sink while she thought. At eleven the boy had been forced to take his first life and lamented. At twelve he’d found a comfort with a blade, killed again, and hated it. Death dogged his steps like some sick and twisted fate and Petunia tried—she _tried_ —to teach him better. Now it haunted his eyes— _Lily’s eyes_ —and Petunia just knew. The boy tasted death and found a liking to it, found a naturalness in it, and that unnaturalness would spread from here on out.

The beautiful, bright boy that was all Lily’s before Lily turned from her—Petunia had lost him, just as she had lost Lily. Petunia knew. She failed.

* * *

 

Sixteen, seventeen, and finally at the age of eighteen Petunia finally learned that the war that Lily feared so much had taken off after only a scant decade of a pause. War was such an utterly _human_ creation, the idea that those who might’ve worn connections to Those That Came Before would fall into flights of fancy that meant _war_ and _death_ and _violence_ abhorred her. Yet they did, and it made Petunia wonder just how much humanity corrupted the First.

Then, all of a sudden, it was over. The boy came to tell her that she and Dudley and Vernon were safe now, but Petunia could read the lines of his gait as easily as she could read Lily’s. She didn’t need to grasp at his left arm to know that a blade could be found hidden up the sleeve, although she did so anyway for her own peace of mind before she bade the boy to go.

Death had claimed Harry Potter and robbed Petunia Dursley neé Evans of her last chance. Then Dudley was twenty-one and married. Vernon had a heart attack on the day of Dudley’s wedding, and barely a week later does the boy come to her doorstep with condolences. He was a man now, twenty, almost twenty-one himself. He had a wife that Petunia wasn’t even aware he’d married. He still stood with the gate of a killer, the blade still strapped to his left arm, but he smiled like the boy used to when he was small and Petunia felt the coldness ease just a little inside.

“Dudley told me,” Harry said softly over a cup of tea. His wife had left him on the doorstep with a kiss to his cheek before she headed down the road, left him and Petunia alone at Number Four. Petunia refused to give up the house, even if it felt so very empty with no children and the absence of a dead husband she never did quite love.

Petunia sipped at her tea.

“I know you didn’t love him,” Harry continued with his too-old eyes set upon her, bright and filled with that uncanny intelligence.

“Then why are you here?” Petunia asked.

“He was your husband,” Harry said, as if that was all that mattered. Petunia saw him off shortly after, stole up to her bedroom, and picked up the cross necklace that was a gift once. That she’d left behind once.

Like a seal Petunia placed the cross around her neck. It felt almost like a noose; it stole her breath like how the boy bore an assassins blade and walked hand in hand with Death. Vernon had been her husband, yes, but he’d been cherry picked for her by her Uncles just as she’d been cherry picked through genetics to exist—just as Lily had.

Somewhere Petunia had forgotten that. She placed her hand over the necklace and closed her eyes—and whispered, _Father of Understanding, guide me_ , as if it held any meaning at all.

* * *

 

Dudley had his first child at twenty-two, and a year later Harry reported to her about his own firstborn son. Petunia kept up correspondences and tea with both her boys while she returned to her work within the Order. Petunia took up a job as a secretary at Abstergo, now, though once it’d been Grunnings. She worked diligently as they needed her to, reported about her son and his beautiful wife and their utterly plain and ungifted child.

When questioned about Harry Petunia gave away the information just as willingly. She knew they traced the bloodline back, knew he had Assassin in him as much as he had Templar, and she knew that when they were ready they would tell her. She told them everything, played diligent and used her gifts when warranted. They wanted her to help with a new program, so she did, until they came to her after Harry told her of his second son, his second pride, and said they wanted to test something new.

They called it ‘Animus’ and whatever it was had been in the works perhaps as long as the Project that made Petunia had been; perhaps longer, Petunia wasn’t privy to that information. What she did know was that they wanted her nephew and his sons—they had nothing on the wife, the boys would be able to give them that and they also would have what their father had, supposedly, as it followed the genetic lineage. At any rate when they demanded, Petunia followed, and finally found a way to redeem what she felt she failed at.

Petunia’s job had always been to better prepare Lily, precious Lily, for the fated day when the world would come to burn once more. The idea had been that perhaps they’d find some means and manner to save it in the depths of knowledge from the Precursors, hoarded by these ‘witches’ and ‘wizards’ that were both old and new. The gifts that Petunia had, that _Lily_ had, also meant they were talented in ways that could help through other means, as well, with the pretty baubles and shiny trinkets left from a world long passed.

The world was destined to burn, and Lily and Petunia were meant to stop it. Petunia still believed that—only now she knew that _Harry_ would have to. So, aware of what her job had always been—to guide and protect—Petunia listened when she was told to take a team and retrieve her nephew and his children. Petunia listened, and planned.

* * *

 

There was a clock on the wall that nobody paid attention to. Petunia stared at it as she sat in the kitchen with a cooling corpse, the acquisitions team just now up the stairs quiet as can be. The clock didn’t read time, but read something wholly _Other_. One hand said ‘Danger’ and another ‘Death’ and the last ‘Betrayal.’ The hands weren’t what moved, but little tiny faces of the people who lived in the house. Upon Death rested a portrait of Ginny, who lain in her own blood, belly swollen with what should’ve been life.

Two boys, toddlers, rested upon Danger, while a portrait of Petunia’s own face settled on Betrayal. She knew this clock, and she watched and waited and sipped upon tea until she could hear the familiar silent-steps of her nephew as he moved through the open door, into the hall, and then into the kitchen. She said nothing as he took in the sight of the room and saw his dead wife with their unborn child.

Harry sucked in a weak sort of breath. “Aunt Petunia?”

Petunia set her cup down and stood from the table. She walked over to her nephew and pulled the boy’s gaze away from his wife. She towered over him, as she knew she always would. One hand cupped his cheek.

“What did I tell you, boy?” Petunia said, voice soft. Her right hand reached down and grasped his left, pulled it up and tightened her own fingers around the hidden blade.

“To never let killing be natural,” Harry said, voice a whisper.

“What did you do, boy?”

“Aunt Petunia—”

Petunia squeezed his wrist right and leaned down enough until the edge of the blade poked at her throat, until her necklace slipped out of her blouse. She stared down into his vibrant too-old eyes that gleamed unnaturally.

“What did you do,” Petunia asked. The boy’s gaze caught on the cross.

For a moment Harry was silent, and then he whispered, “I never let killing be natural, Aunt Petunia.” His gaze darted back up to her eyes. “I—” Petunia smiled at the lie.

“I do this for you,” Petunia said. “I do this all for you.” Her left hand slipped from his cheek, reached to the kitchen table, and swung the knife she stabbed Ginny Potter with against his left arm. She swung it into the mechanism of the blade hard enough that she hoped it would shatter. She said, “This is—”

Petunia’s world went dark with death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is where it ends.
> 
> The next story is **On Broken Wings** and will come from Harry's POV. I finally figured out what the fuck I was doing with it, and have started writing enough of it that I feel comfortable posting the last portion of this story.
> 
> It is...not meant to be a satisfactory ending. It is meant to be as abrupt as it is. It is meant to leave you. If this story has done all of that, then I have accomplished my goal.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my original first foray int assassin's creed fanfiction. A crossover. I couldn't figure out how to get it written down, so I set it aside for months while I played through the various assassin's creed games. It is only after writing the portions I have on Dreaming Bitter Darkly that I've come to understand what I wanted to do with this in much better detail.
> 
> It's a short story, which has a second related story, and then a planned sequel that is technically the main story. Who knows how long that will be.


End file.
